"They presented a story that was narrated by the custodian at the Statue of Liberation, a tall, stooped man with a mop and a billed cap, drawn to look a lot like George Deasey. Apparently, the unfortunate fellow had a bone to pick with 'that long-underwear bunch.' He then went on to describe how, just that morning, he had watched in horror as Professor Percival 'Smarty' Pantz, hapless know-it-all rival of Dr. E. Pluribus Hewnham, the Scientific American, performed an 'electro-brain implantation procedure' on the Lady. The idea was to enlist the statue in the effort to keep the skies of Empire City clear of enemy planes and airships. 'She’ll be able to swat Messerschmitts like mosquitos!' Pantz crowed. Instead, thanks to the usual miscalculation on the part of Dr. Pantz, she had, upon awakening, gone off striding across the bay toward Empire City, her spike-crowned electro-head filled with homicidal urges. Of course the Scientific American, employing a handy giant robot of his own manufacture that he quickly fitted out with an enormous Clark Gable mask, was able to lure her back to her pillar, and then neutralize her using 'superdynamic electromagnets.' But it all made, to the exasperation of the janitor-narrator, an awful mess."

I'm perfectly willing to believe that Prof von Schmartzenpanz's criticism is right there on the protean, spine-tinglingly transgressive cusp of post-feminist hermeneutic deconstructivist theory, but you guys really need to get the story straight (so to speak).

Which is it - born and intrinsically hypermasculine, as reesetee would have us believe, or shapeshifting sexual reassignment surgery?

Reesetee: I assume that last sentence in your most recent comment was really supposed to read:

Also, sionnach may be forgetting, or perhaps wasn't aware, that Professor von Schmartzenpanz has had sexual reassignment surgery. That's why the accent was missing over the E (née). It also kind of explains his exceedingly postmodern feminism.

Yes, but supposing npydyuan made a typographical error (which I believe is what actually happened). If you check the chaordic page, which was created before this one, you'll see that the professor clearly is a male.

Sorry, c_b. I must respectfully differ. Regardless of the backstory, if nee was used to refer to the perfessor, than at that time the perfessor in question would have to have been female. Otherwise, the male form of the adjective, ne, would have been used.

Au contraire, sionnach. I think that 'nee' in this case refers to the Professor's bachelor name. He was Schmartzenpanz enough to object to the millennia-old institutional objectification of women as sexual slave labor by changing his name to his wife's (Dr. von Schmartzenpanz happens to be the Dean of Faculty). ;)

It would appear that the good Professor has a little of that Loki shapeshifter magic that we expect to see in all our academic superstars. As the designation "nee von Smarty Pants" clearly indicates, von Smarty Pants was female. However, it appears that the masculinity of Professor von Schmartzenpanz is unquestioned. Was the apparent sex-change coincident with the name-change?

Noted chaordic theoretician (nee von Smarty Pants). In later life, advanced lame-ass theory of the non-existence of adjectives; arguing that an adjective is really an adverb modifying an implied verb of existence. The theory rested on some dumb-ass idea that the conventional distinction between "existence" and other "actions" is artificial and misleading; that all verbs are, in their purest state, expressions, like everything else, of pure energy.